everyday travelling

What is it about travelling and being in new places that can be so invigorating? The magic may just be in a switch back to the discovery mode, a child-like mind, when everything is new and fresh again. We are more conscious again.  

Now, how one masters a certain skill? Playing a guitar, driving a vehicle, walking. By repeating it so many times that the execution becomes automatic and, as such, unconscious.

And it can be great and often just plain necessary to run on this mode. But the unconscious mode is expanding not just to particular skill sets, but also to every-day activities and whole blocks of them. “Métro, boulot, dodo”, as the French expression goes. From a skill of unconscious walking we can go to another “skill” of unconsciously walking from one place to another. And by extension, we often “unconsciousize” whole days.

A tragic consequence of it is that we are most unconscious in the most repetitious and habituated parts of our lives – our homes, families, workplaces, relationships.

Today I will open my eyes and heart, slow down and become traveller again in the trenches of my everyday life.

This post flows with Paul Kalkbrenner - Dockyard